So they eat babies?

Another common meme to dehumanize and defame the Chinese people is that they are cannibals and specifically eat babies. The Nazi analogy meme, the cruelty to animals meme and this meme have been very successfully employed in getting people to see the Chinese people as less than human. After all, what’s more worthy of white folk’s’ sympathies than Tibetans, cute furry animals and babies? What’s more worthy of condemnation and foam-at-the-mouth vitriol than any perceived harm done to those most venerable groups of innocent beings? The latest epidemic in this last infestation of hate-mongering is from South Korean customs officials that claim that pills made of ground up baby powder was manufactured in China to be distributed in South Korea as medicine and “stamina enhancement” supplements.

What evidence did they have to offer for this claim? Apparently nothing. So these Koreans claim that the reason they have not given any evidence that these pills are from China is that they feared “diplomatic problems” with Beijing (doesn’t the allegation already accomplish that?). How convenient. How cowardly. Make groundless disgust-inducing accusation at another group which diverts negative attention away from own’s own group to another without any evidence then claim that the refusal to provide evidence for that claim is to avoid “diplomatic problems”! Right. Korean officials, knowing full well the PR disaster this might cause to their country, now seems to wage a campaign war to divert negative attention to another country and people who are commonly marked for such allegations. The western press of course, being composed of mostly mindless, functionally illiterate sheep, have drooled over this story. It contains everything they want in a China-story. Demonic Chinese grounding up babies for consumption. So the South Korean ploy seem to have worked. They took advantage of the west’s racism for their own benefit.

Koreans find pills made from human flesh in their country that other Koreans are using for their own weird purposes and are now blaming it (apparently without evidence) on the Chinese all by exploiting the myth in the west that Chinese are so subhuman that they would ground up their babies for medicine.

However, it is not clear that the powder is even really from ground up babies. A Korean documentary claimed that the powder was tested and results suggests that it is from human tissue but they may be from fetuses or even other sources (such as corpses or human tissue from medical waste, etc). The Chinese government have said that their previous investigations have found no support for the claim that these pills are manufactured inside China. So is this another case of the Chinese being defamed by racist propagandists?

The evidence, like I’ve said, is non existent as the Korean officials have refused to offer any proof that the pills are from China and I find the accusations highly suspicious with possible nefarious motives. Apparently this is not the first time these Korean officials have alleged the same accusations at China without evidence.

The baby eating claim has a notorious history. It is a wonderfully effective instrument to manufacture hate for any group to accuse them of eating children. This is most clearly seen during the Middle Ages when a similar defamation was used against Jews (Blood Libel). Indeed, many persecuted groups may have experienced such defamatory accusations.

The Chinese are the latest group commonly suspected of Blood Libel. These accusations almost always turn out to be false such as the claim that a famous Chinese performance artist once ate aborted fetus corpses as a performance. Pics are found all over the internet of him dinning fork and knife in hand at a plate of dead babies (or fetuses depending on who you ask). Some rumors speculated that the pics were from a restaurant in Taiwan where babies are routinely served as a delicacy. Notice that in all cases, the word “babies” are used even when the accusations are originally of aborted fetuses. One wonders why the western press don’t called abortions in the western world “aborting babies”.

When Hong Kong authorities in conjunction with the help of Scotland Yard investigated the allegations of the artist, they found that this is likely an urban legend where the “baby” he was “eating’ was likely made of doll parts (he is an artist after all, and they create things out of scratch and perform scenes that are fabrications of reality).

The problem is that often these accusations are made then when no further evidence substantiating the claims subsequently appear, no effort is made to follow up and show that they were baseless so many people go on accepting them.

Furthermore, no context is given and innuendos are used to suggest that these practices are part of Chinese culture or even Chinese peoples’ nature and only pertain to them (and not normal humans). For example, in the latest episodes of these allegations, articles often point out (with the most loaded and sordid language they can manage) that placentas are sometimes made into traditional Chinese medicine. This conveniently shields the fact that placentas are used as medicine and eaten in almost all cultures including that of the west even today (see here and here for example).

Furthermore, European culture have long history of eating human flesh used as medecine. Mummy powder was popular till relatively recently in Europe for treating all sorts of illnesses. Many people in Europe also once gathered for public executions to collect the blood and bones of those executed to make things like soup.

Cosmetic companies in the west also use fetal tissue in cosmetics such as face creams. But the virulently racist denunciations are not forthcoming for all these other verified instances of human cannibalism and medicinal fetal tissue use which are directed at white people.